Bethany Mellmoth hasn’t really registered the nature of the person sitting beside her as she makes the long tube journey homewards from her place of work, from Dalston, in the very east of London, to Fulham in the fairly far west. Male, tall, possibly a smoker – she can smell the cigarette smoke on him – would be the best description she could muster, if asked. She’s reading, not paying attention. But, as they pull into Fulham Broadway station, this indeterminate male stands up and makes his way through the crowd to the doors. Bethany follows. The train is full and some schoolkids are larking about, bumping into people. Bethany sees a book drop from the man’s bag as they brush clumsily by him and she stoops to pick it up. She grabs it and is swept out by the crowd on to the platform.

“Hey! You’ve dropped – ”

But he’s gone, lost in the surging stream of impassive commuters heading home. He probably never even noticed it had fallen, she thinks, such was the scrum at the door. She stands there and looks at the book in her hand – a hardback, wrapped in brown paper, as if to protect the jacket. What should she do? She goes to a bench and sits down. It’s just a book, maybe it wasn’t very important to him. She opens it and reads on the title page: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. She closes her eyes. Opens them. Fulham Broadway tube station seems to bend and swirl around her, hallucogenically. She feels the skin across her shoulders tighten and she shivers. Is this a joke? Her gaze searches the people on the platform but nobody is looking at her. But it must be some kind of sign, she thinks. George Orwell is her favourite writer; she reveres George Orwell. In fact, she reveres him so much that she’s contemplating writing a novel herself – a homage to Nineteen Eighty-Four – that she’s going to call 2084. But nobody knows this except her. Nobody in the entire world. What’s going on?

Bethany is “between boyfriends” as she likes to put it. She has unilaterally abandoned her latest boyfriend, Aldous, the standup comic, as he was clearly insane, but as to who her next boyfriend will be she has no idea, currently. She’s not perturbed, in fact she’s quite enjoying these weeks of celibacy, these weeks of self-indulgence. She’s moved back home, symbolically, into the granny flat in her mother’s house in Hollywood Road, Fulham, SW6.

She lets herself into the basement – she can tell her mother’s in, she can hear music: there’s always music playing in her mother’s bit of the house. She dumps her rucksack, sits at her desk and carefully unpeels the sticky tape that secures the book’s brown-paper wrapper to reveal the dust jacket beneath. Green background, white cursive script, the words “nineteen eighty-four” (no capitals) overlaying the paler white numbers: 1984. She opens the book delicately as the pages are stiff, yellowing somewhat. On the title page is an inscription in black ink: “To Ailsa McTurk, with thanks, Geo. Orwell”. Bethany closes her eyes again, hearing the rushing of blood in her ears, her cheeks hot. This is getting out of control. Further investigation reveals that the book is a first edition, Secker and Warburg, 1949, and, on the endboard at the back there is a new small sticky label: “www.Orwelliana.com, Isle of Jura, Scotland”.

A moment at her laptop, finding the website, uncovers more details. Orwelliana is an antiquarian bookseller on the Isle of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland. Bethany needs no reminding – Jura was where Orwell actually wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. And there’s a telephone number. She makes the call and a woman answers. Bethany tells her what happened, how she came to have this precious book in her possession. Her love of Orwell. The extraordinary coincidence. Hello? The woman on the end of the phone has gone silent for a moment. Then she says: “Yes, yes. That’s, ah, wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful. It’s ours. Our courier lost it.”

“Would you like me to bring it back personally?” Bethany hears herself saying. “I’d be more than happy to.”

Another silence. Bethany now recognises that the woman has a slight South African accent. Bethany thinks she’s talking to someone in the room.

“That’s very kind of you,” the woman says. “We would pay all expenses.” Pause. “And a reward.”

“I don’t want a reward,” Bethany says – thinking: Jura. Bethany on Jura. “It would be a privilege and an honour.”

Bethany goes upstairs to her mother’s portion of the house. Her mother is removing the decorations from the Christmas tree that she installed three days before. She and Bethany had spent two hours decorating that tree on 15 December. Now all the tinsel and baubles are going back in their boxes.

“What’s going on, Mum – Allanah?” Bethany asks, surprised, turning down the volume of the music that’s playing (“Radio Gaga”). Bethany’s mother has recently asked her to stop calling her “Mum” or “Mummy” and to use her Christian name instead. Bethany is still not accustomed to the change. When she asked her mother why she wanted to be called Allanah her mother had simply said: “Because it’s right. It’s the right time.”

“Why? I want to call you Mummy.”

“You can’t. You’re 24 years old.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Exactly. So it should be woman to woman, not child to mother.”

“If you insist.”

“I’m afraid I do, darling.”

Allanah goes into the kitchen and reappears, e-cigarette poised.

Bethany plunges in. “I’m going away for a few days,” she says, “but I’ll be back before Christmas.”

The antiquarian bookseller is in a small side street in Mayfair. Looking through the plate-glass window Bethany can see it is very dark inside and there seem only to be a few dozen books on the many solid shelves. Bethany pushes the door open and hears a bell tinkle, as in a Dickens novel. At the far end a young man appears in a three-piece suit and a bow tie. Even in the gloom Bethany can see he has flaming orange hair – almost like high-vis hair, she thinks, and wonders what torments he endured at school. They greet each other and she sits down opposite him at his desk. He has even features – quite nice features, in fact – very pale skin and a defensive, haughty demeanour. Because of his hair, Bethany supposes.

She tells him she has a friend who has inherited a signed, dedicated, first edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four and she wonders how much it might cost.

Bethany can see he’s still doubtful, but growing excited, despite himself.

“The dedicatee?” he asks.

“Someone called Ailsa McTurk.”

“How’s it signed?”

“Geo, full stop, Orwell.”

“What colour is the dust jacket?”

“Green.” She smiles. “My friend was keen to know how much it was worth.”

He thinks for a moment.

“I’d offer you £150,000. Subject to inspection.”

He gives her his card.

The journey to Jura is fairly complicated. Bethany flies to Glasgow on a jet and waits three hours before she takes another plane (propeller) to the island of Islay, south of Jura. From Islay airport there is a bus journey to Port Askaig where she then takes a short ferry ride across the half-mile of the Sound of Islay to Feolin, the ferry port on Jura. Then it’s another bus the few miles to Jura’s only village, Craighouse, with its one hotel (with a bar) and a shop.

On the way she has plenty of time to read. She has George Orwell’s diaries that cover the two years of his stay on Jura – 1946-48 – and so she thinks she knows roughly what to expect: a long thin mountainous island (27 miles long, approximately); one side, west, unpopulated, with Atlantic beaches, the other side facing the mainland, the promontory of Argyll. Orwell came to Jura for isolation, she knows, and for Jura’s surprisingly mild weather. Orwell’s house, Barnhill, is at the northern tip of the island, 20-odd miles away from Craighouse. Once she has returned the book to Orwelliana, Bethany tells herself, she’s going to make a pilgrimage to Barnhill, come what may. It might inspire her own 2084, she reasons. She might pick up the Orwell vibe.

Sitting on the bus from Feolin to Craighouse Bethany sees the lemony afternoon sun light the round brown tops of the three stark mountains at the island’s southern end, three mountains known as the Paps of Jura. It’s surprisingly mild, given that Christmas 2017 is coming up fast. Bethany pulls her beanie cap off and shakes down her long hair. A young man with red-framed spectacles, reading a book, looks up and round at her and smiles.

The South African woman – whose name is Marelize Swanepoel, Bethany now knows – has given her directions from the hotel. Bethany tramps up a sloping track leading off Jura’s only main road towards a large modern-looking bungalow set in an overgrown field. A big maroon 4x4 stands parked outside and on the front door is a sign, in cod-Celtic lettering, saying “Welcome to Orwelliana”. Somehow Bethany feels that George wouldn’t approve. She rings the bell.

The door is opened and Bethany finds herself confronting a thin-faced but attractive young woman with a tousled mass of dense blond hair, wearing a denim dress and a pale blue fleece.

“You can only be Bethany,” she says, and leans forward to give her a dry kiss on the cheek. “Our saviour.”

Bethany tries not to look at the silver steel pole of Marelize’s prosthetic right leg, set securely in an acid-green trainer, as she follows her through to the office, a light-filled room with a wide view of the stretch of water – the Bay of Small Isles — between Craighouse and the Argyll shore beyond. There are three long shelves all filled with editions of Orwell’s books and books about him. Piled in the corner are huge rolls of bubble wrap and bales of padded envelopes. On a desk is a computer and a franking machine.

Antiquarian bookselling in the internet age, Marelize explains. Who needs a bookshop any more?

“Buying an Orwell book from Jura is our USP,” she says, showing Bethany the customised franking label (Orwelliana overlaid on an outline of Jura) that they insert into the franking machine. “You wouldn’t believe how many people will pay more for this baby.” She places her hand on the franking machine and smiles. A lips-only smile, Bethany thinks, as she rummages in her rucksack for Nineteen Eighty-Four and hands it over. She has protected it with a simple parcel of corrugated cardboard and, as she looks around at the rolls of bubble wrap and the heaps of padded envelopes, a thought comes to her suddenly: why was this “courier” carrying the book wrapped only in brown paper? Why was it not sealed in its own bubble-wrapped, padded envelope?

Marelize is addressing this very topic. She tells Bethany that the courier – from a small but very reputable firm; all Orwelliana’s expensive editions are hand-delivered – is now wanted by the police, accused of theft.

Bethany unpacks her rucksack, her head in something of a whirl. She is in a small, thick-walled, two-roomed cottage with a shower and WC a hundred yards up the track from Orwelliana. She had booked a room in the Jura hotel but Marelize had insisted she stay with them. This was the Orwelliana guest cottage – free, stay as long as you like, we’ll all have supper tonight. The cottage is functional – carpet tiles, good junk-shop furniture – the walls filled with reproductions of photographs of George Orwell at various stages of his life. Bethany feels she knows this face as well as her distant, divorced father’s – almost. The thick hair, the deep seams on either side of the thin mouth, the – frankly – incredibly stupid little moustache lying along the top of his upper lip like a bit of edged furze, the omnipresent cigarette. The cottage comes with a pair of state-of-the art, multi-geared mountain bikes. Orwell’s house, Barnhill, is hard to reach, at the end of a muddy dirt road. Marelize says it’ll take her a day to get there and back.

At dinner Bethany meets Marelize’s husband, Lachlan Ballater. He’s a lean, quiet man with short prematurely grey hair and a polite Scottish accent. He’s one of those men, Bethany quickly decides, who seem, annoyingly, to be always laughing quietly to themselves as if permanently amused by the world’s inanity. Nolan Rees, the surgeon, is also there and Bethany warms to him more. He seems genuinely interested in her Orwell fixation and keeps saying: “Yes, yes, fascinating man” as Bethany rambles on, wondering who this Ailsa McTurk was, trying to imagine what Jura must have been like for Orwell in the late 1940s – the deprivation, the hardships, the isolation – almost but not quite telling them about 2084. Lachlan doesn’t say much and does the cooking and clears the dishes. Bethany wonders if this is because Marelize only has one leg but she seems pretty mobile as she jumps up to replenish their wine glasses.

Then, over coffee, Marelize tells Bethany how she lost her leg and the convivial atmosphere in the room sours, immediately. It happened in Morocco, Marelize says, looking squarely at Lachlan.

“We’d rented a villa and a car. Lachlan backed the car out too quickly and crushed me against a wall. My leg was broken in a dozen places. Shattered.”

Lachlan sits there silently, not laughing to himself any more, Bethany notices, as Marelize outlines in some detail the excruciating pain she suffered, no anaesthetic seemed to work, even on the air ambulance summoned to fly her to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow.

“I thought I was going to lose the whole leg, up to the hip,” Marelize says. “But this wonderful man beside me worked his magic. And here I am today.” She lifts up her prosthetic leg for everyone to see. Then kisses Nolan Rees on the lips, quickly. Nolan laughs it off.

“She was a very brave girl,” he says. “Very.”

After dinner Bethany asks if she can step outside to smoke a cigarette. Lachlan joins her. They are both rolling their own.

“Orwell rolled his own,” Bethany says, keen to break the silence. “Smoked like a chimney.”

“I don’t know very much about Orwell,” Lachlan says. “I work for the Forestry Commission. Orwelliana is Marelize’s business. My house, her business.”

“Oh, right.”

“Sorry about the Marelize show, by the way,” Lachlan says, drily. “Everybody has to go through it.” He draws on his roll-up. “It’s my punishment for the accident. My penance.” He looks at Bethany. “My own little circle of hell.”

Standing beside him like this stirs something in Bethany’s memory. She glances at his profile as he turns away. She smells the smoke from his cigarette. The conviction creeps up on her and settles. Retrospective recognition. Memories cohering late in the day. Lachlan Ballater was the man on the tube at Fulham Broadway. Of course. He was the man who dropped the book as he left the train…

Back inside Bethany drinks too much Isle of Jura whisky, as a nightcap is offered (and re-offered), troubled by this revelation and what its implications might be. Why? What was going on? What’s the motive, here? She feels distinctly unsteady as she walks away from Orwelliana. She pauses for a moment, getting her bearings, realises she’s gone down the hill instead of up and turns about. She switches on the torch device on her mobile phone and plods up the track towards the cottage. She stops. Somebody is at the front door.

“Hello!” she shouts. “Can I help you?”

The figure darts away and disappears completely into the night. Bethany inhales, smelling only the whisky on her own breath. Too much to drink, girl. You’re imagining things.

She stands at the front door searching for her keys, then remembers there aren’t any. Nothing is locked on Jura, Marelize had boasted. Bethany reaches for the door handle then pauses. There is something odd hanging from the door. She switches on her phone, shines the light.

She somehow stifles her scream, reeling back, feeling sick. She knows what this means. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Room 101. Winston Smith and the rat torture. “The worst thing in the world.” Somebody is trying to frighten her away.

Bethany does not sleep well, even though she’s dragged a chest of drawers to block the door. With a stick she had knocked the rat off the knocker and kicked it into the darkness of the night. She is up before dawn, makes herself a cup of tea and plans her day ahead. She knows it was Lachlan who put the rat on the door – he must have sensed her mood-change, sensed her suspicion, somehow. Anyway, she decides, she will go to Orwell’s house then leave Jura, and Orwelliana, forever. She needs no more encouragement.

She cycles one of the mountain bikes down into Craighouse and buys a sandwich and a bottle of water before heading north up the A846 along the edge of the Sound of Jura, the Kintyre peninsula appearing through the mists on her right-hand side, the craggy hills looming on the left. It looks like being another crisp sunny day. She cycles on, making good time, along the undulating single-track road. She stops for lunch and eats her sandwich, looking at a small herd of deer on the hillside opposite. Down below on a rocky bay is a small white house with a jetty. Bethany imagines herself living there, tending her vegetable garden, writing 2084 undisturbed by the world and its demanding business. It has a powerful appeal, she admits to herself, finding the prospect of returning to London, and her job as a gallerina in a Dalston art gallery, depressing – not to say demeaning.

Onwards, she says to herself. An hour later she reaches the end of the metalled road. A dirt track stretches ahead through the tough grass and heather and there is a sign: “PATH TO CORRYVRECKAN. Barnhill 4 miles. No motor vehicles.” She cycles on.

Barnhill is exactly as she pictured it, except whiter than it appears in the old photographs, and somewhat larger than she imagined, still isolated on its low hill and rocky cliffs. Beyond is the silvered stretch of water that is the Sound of Jura with its small islands and Loch Crinan opposite on the mainland. Bethany feels her shoulders hunch and she shivers, feeling the Orwell vibe, she hopes. She leans her bicycle against a fence post and walks down towards the house, thinking: this is almost exactly as it was for George Orwell, 70 years ago. The house seems empty – it can be rented, she knows – but there is no sign or indication anywhere that this was where Orwell lived and where Nineteen Eighty-Four was written. For some reason she thinks he’d be pleased by this indifference. She picks up a flinty pebble and puts it in her pocket; breaks off a sprig of heather and folds it into her map. She inhales, exhales, printing everything as best she can on her memory. Then she hears the sound of an engine and looks around. Up above, where the track is, she sees some birds take flight, disturbed.

She clambers back up to where she left her bicycle. Both tyres are flat. She tries to pump them up but they won’t inflate. She finds the small holes where they were punctured. She doesn’t believe these punctures were caused by the rocky terrain she has covered. And there was that noise of a vehicle. First a rat and now her bike sabotaged. She gets the message. Leave. Now. Thanks, Lachlan.

Bethany arrives back in Craighouse after dark. She has managed to have her punctures repaired at a farmhouse in Ardlussa, her irritation eased somewhat by the thought that this was where Orwell would come from Barnhill to collect his post, twice a week. She goes straight to her cottage – all lights are blazing in Orwelliana, the maroon 4x4 parked innocently in the driveway. She finds the card she was looking for. Grenfell Gower, Antiquarian Booksellers. Time to talk to Grenfell, she reckons, he of the flaming orange hair.

Grenfell sounds more friendly on the phone and is surprised to hear from her – and even more surprised when he learns she’s telephoning from Jura.

“If I was going to sell you that first edition,” she asks, “what would you check?”

“The book itself is easy to verify,” Grenfell says. “It’s the dedication that gives one pause – assuming the handwriting and the signature match. I mean – who is this Ailsa McTurk? I’ve never heard of her – then I’m not an Orwell expert.”

“I’ve never heard of her either,” Bethany says. “And I am a bit of an Orwell expert. In all modesty.”

“The first edition was published in 1949, Orwell died when?”

“Saturday, January 21st, 1950,” Bethany says, instantly.

“Well, this Ailsa McTurk was probably someone on Jura, most likely.”

The next morning, Bethany stands on the small stone pier that is Craighouse’s harbour looking for an old person. She wanders up and down scanning the passers-by. She sees a man with grey hair coming out of the distillery and approaches him. It’s hard to tell how old people are, she realises. Everybody who isn’t obviously young seems old to her. She introduces herself and asks if he’s from Jura.

“Born and bred,” the man says. “How can I help you?”

“I’m trying to find out about a woman called Ailsa McTurk – who might have known George Orwell in 1948.”

He frowns and says the name McTurk a few times. “You’d better ask my mother,” the man says. “She knows everybody on Jura.”

The man’s mother lives in a cottage beyond the distillery. She’s a small, bright-eyed woman with floaty white hair like thistledown.

The old lady ponders. “She lived up at Ardlussa. I think she may have helped with the wee boy.”

“That would be Orwell’s adopted son, Richard,” Bethany says. “He was just a toddler. Two years old.”

“Aye. Ailsa McTurk is buried in Kilearnadil cemetery if you’d like to visit her grave.”

“Where’s that?”

“Up the road to Keils and turn left.”

“Ailsa McTurk. 1904-1950”. Bethany stands in the small graveyard, all tussocky grass and leaning headstones, and takes a photograph of Ailsa McTurk’s grave. She has done an internet search and can find no connection at all between George Orwell and this woman – this dedicatee of a first edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Not that the absence means anything, Bethany realises. She thinks of all the people she’s known in her 25 years – dozens, hundreds – and how few of them would actually figure in a biography of her life. Perhaps Ailsa McTurk was a babysitter, or took little Richard Orwell for walks, and George was duly grateful.

She jumps a bit as her phone rings – strange to be called in this remote cemetery. It’s Grenfell Gower.

“Thought you’d like to know,” he says. “A signed, dedicated first edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four has just been sold to an American university — $220,000.”

Bethany knows what she’s meant to ask next.

“Who’s it dedicated to?”

“Someone called Ross Sherrifmuir. Ever heard of him?”

Bethany returns to Orwelliana to pack up her bits and pieces and say farewell. She’s going to catch the ferry back to Islay and head on from there to Glasgow. She rings the bell of Orwelliana — no reply. She opens the door.

“Hello? Lachlan? Marelize? It’s me…”

No reply. The house is empty. Nothing is locked on Jura, after all.

Bethany stands there. She knows she shouldn’t do what she’s going to do next but the opportunity is there and must be taken. She slips into the office. The glass- fronted cabinet has its key obligingly left in the lock. Inside there are numerous first editions: she spots Coming Up For Air, Animal Farm and Keep the Aspidistra Flying and, the ones she’s looking for, four copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four. All the editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, unlike the others, are signed and dedicated. There’s Ailsa McTurk, but also dedications to Jennie Forfar, Neil Langbane and Stuart Skaith. Bethany steps back into the hallway, listening – silence. She lines up the editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four and takes photographs of their title pages with the dedications. She puts them back in the cabinet and almost locks it – then remembers. Seconds later, she’s back outside. The maroon 4x4 turns into the driveway. Marelize is at the wheel and Nolan Rees is beside her.

“Hi,” Bethany smiles. “I just rang the bell but no one was there. I wondered if I could stay on for a couple more days.”

Back in Kilearnadil cemetery, Bethany prowls around. There’s still enough light left in the afternoon sky for her to read the inscriptions. It takes her 10 minutes to find the graves of Jennie Forfar, Neil Langbane, Stuart Skaith and Ross Sherrifmuir. All of them died in 1950, the year after Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. She takes photographs of the headstones and sends them to Grenfell Gower. She knows what’s happening, now – as, indeed, will Grenfell. The next step is going to be the tricky one.

Bethany is waiting outside the Jura hotel. It’s cold. There’s a smell in the air – a distillery smell, she thinks, not surprisingly given there’s a great big distillery about 30 yards away. What would that be? Barley. Yes. Barley fermenting or something. She has called Marelize and asked her to meet in the hotel bar but then has decided against that. Too many people who know Marelize. Best to keep it one on one as it’s so delicate, not to say potentially explosive. So she waits outside, smoking, until she sees Marelize walking along the front towards her. Bethany stands on her roll-up and goes to meet her.

“What’s going on, Bethany? What’s all this cloak and dagger stuff?”

“This is very awkward,” Bethany begins, “but I think you should know. The person who dropped that edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the tube in London was Lachlan. I recognised him.”

Marelize doesn’t respond. She visibly stiffens, however, arching her back.

“What are you saying? Exactly.”

Bethany takes a deep breath. Squares her shoulders.

“I think he’s been forging the dedications to those first editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four,” she says. “He’s selling them for hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

Marelize listens as Bethany tells her what she’s discovered. She nods, mutely. Then she asks a couple of questions. Bethany mentions an “antiquarian bookseller” in London who has given her crucial information – this seemed to be particularly devastating news to Marelize. She asks the name of the bookseller and Bethany tells her. Grenfell Gower. Marelize appears to slump and says, quietly: “Oh God, oh God, no.” Then Bethany tells her about the graves in Kilearnadil cemetery – the clincher.

“Thank you,” Marelize says, in a little strangled voice. “Leave everything to me, please. I think it’s best if you stay away.”

“God, yes. I’ll get a room in the hotel.”

“Give me 24 hours. I’ll sort everything out.”

“I’m sorry, Marelize. I thought I had to tell you.”

“Yes.” She thinks. “Yes. Thank you, Bethany.”

She turns and walks slowly – thoughtfully, Bethany thinks, her head bowed – back to Orwelliana.

What have I done? Bethany asks herself. This was meant to be a pilgrimage.

Bethany waits until noon the next day before returning to Orwelliana. The maroon 4x4 isn’t there but, to her surprise and embarrassment, Lachlan Ballater opens the door.

“I’m afraid she’s gone,” Lachlan says, flatly. “Done a runner. She’s left me. Run off with her bloody surgeon – sorry, her lover. She did leave a note, though.” He smiles his cynical, amused smile. “I should have seen it coming, I suppose. The husband’s always the last to know.”

Bethany is feeling a little sick.

“Could I just have a quick look in the office?” she says. Lachlan leads the way. Bethany goes to the glass-fronted cabinet. The four copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four are gone. Of course. Evidence destroyed. She tells him about last night’s conversation with Marelize. The graves in Kilearnadil cemetery. She gabbles a bit as she explains her reasoning: it must have been Nolan Rees who was sitting beside her on the tube that day when he accidently dropped the book getting off. Maybe he was down in London trying to sell it – he and Marelize working in tandem.

“I think I owe you an apology, Lachlan,” Bethany says.

“How could I have got it so wrong?” she continues, exasperated. “I was convinced it was you.”

“There’s the benign paradox,” he says, nodding, thinking it over. “Your entirely wrong assumption led you to solve the mystery. In a way.”

“I suppose I should be pleased. But I’m sort of irritated.”

“Think about it.” Lachlan says. “Very smart. Five first editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, all dedicated to genuine Jura folk after the book was published, all very plausible.”

“Half a million pounds,” Bethany says. “Not bad for a running-away fund.”

“More. If they were clever.”

“Yes… They’d take their time selling them, I suppose.”

“Don’t flood the market.”

“Sell around the world. Here, the States, Australia…”

They both pause, considering the nature of the scheme. Bethany is quite impressed.

“I suppose it was Nolan Rees who hung the rat on my door and punctured my bicycle tyres,” she says. “Wanted me off Jura.”

Lachlan looks at her, shrewdly. He’s really rather attractive in his laconic way, Bethany thinks, feeling sorry for him, what with his wife using him like this for her elaborate fraud, then running off with her boyfriend.

“They must have sensed you were dangerous in some way,” Lachlan muses. “Your Orwell obsession spooked them. Didn’t want another expert sniffing around.”

“I’m hardly an expert. I came here on a pilgrimage,” Bethany says. “I had no idea.”

“What can I do to thank you?” Lachlan says. “You name it.”

Bethany has her answer ready.

“Can I stay on in the cottage until the new year?” she says. “My mother’s gone to spend Christmas in Ghana.”

Bethany opens her laptop. There’s a small fire glowing in the hearth and the wind has got up outside. She has food and drink, the world and its demanding business is far from her door, just as it was for George Orwell when he came to Jura. And Lachlan Ballater has asked her to Christmas dinner.

About the author

Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, William Boyd grew up there and in Nigeria. He went to Gordonstoun school in Scotland and studied at the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford before becoming a lecturer in English literature at St Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1980. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa, was published in 1981. Since then, he has received worldwide acclaim for his novels, which include An Ice-Cream War, Stars and Bars, The New Confessions, Waiting for Sunrise and Sweet Caress. He is a prolific screenwriter and has adapted several of his own novels for film and TV, most recently a four-part version of Any Human Heart for Channel 4. In 1998, Boyd caused a stir on both sides of the Atlantic when he conspired with David Bowie to publish the fake biography, Nat Tate: An American Artist. His new short story collection, The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth, is published by Viking (£14.99).